What is your dream for the future? What are you doing each day to invest in your dream?
Soon after the Montgomery Bus Boycott began in December of 1955, The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. found himself sitting in jail. As he pondered what might become of a movement for equality, justice, and human rights, he wrote a sermon entitled, ‘Shattered Dreams.’ He introduced his sermon with these words: “One of the most agonizing problems within our human experience is that few, if any of us, live to see our fondest hopes fulfilled. The hopes of our childhood and the promises of our mature years are unfinished symphonies.”
Is this the way life seems for you today? Do you have dreams and visions that you have concluded will never be realized? Do you feel isolated like you are behind bars with limited freedom to push toward your vision for a better tomorrow? Does it seem as if ‘shattered dreams’ is your sermon?
Less than eight years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in August of 1963, The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial saying, “I have a dream today.” He encouraged those who listened that day and all those who hear his encouragement through the corridors of time, “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”
In biblical literature, dreams and visions are plentiful. Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Daniel, etc. Dreams and visions are mentioned more than 200 times in The Bible. Many are analyzed.
Beloved, I offer to you that Christ’s Church is God’s dream – not the way humans can distort Christ’s Church, but the way God imagines it. Despite imperfections, sinfulness, corruption, violence, prejudice, shame, racism, pride, injustice, greed, and apathy, no better dream or vision has been entrusted to humanity than God’s vision for Christ’s Church. When we invest our lives in God’s vision for Christ’s Church, we deepen our commitments to follow the teachings and lifestyle practices of Jesus Christ, Lord of our faith. Although the Way of Jesus may be difficult to pursue at times, God’s vision must shape our dreams and visions.
On one occasion, Martin Luther King, Jr. flew on a propeller aircraft from New York to London. That flight took 91/2 hours. On the return flight to New York from London, the pilot explained why it would take 121/2 hours. The distance is the same but the winds are different. The pilot’s explanation prompted MLK, Jr. to write: “At times in our lives, the tail winds of joy, triumph, and fulfillment favor us and at times, the headwinds of disappointment, sorrow, and tragedy beat unrelentingly against us…Our refusal to be stopped, our ‘courage to be,’ our determination to go on ‘in spite of’ reveal the divine image within us.”
As members of Christ’s Body, The Church, you are carrying God’s dream within you. Invest yourselves in God’s vision for this world. And while you may not be able to shape the entire world, do all you can to make St. John’s reflect the image of God’s vision. And don’t give up!
